Young achiever walks alongside others to grow industry and individuals

In 2015, Clement Pilusa (then 26)
walked away with the title of SAB
Kickstart and an accompanying
grant fund of R500 000 for the
development of his business, Pilusa
and Mabotja Farming. This amount
was in addition to the R170 000
seed capital received at the start
of the year. However, what is so
special about Clement is not only
the fact that he is an achiever, but
that he is intent on helping others
learn and grow with him, so that
they can also become achievers
in their own right.

The SAB Kickstart competition is a youth
entrepreneurship competition sponsored by South
African Breweries that has been running for the
past two decades. At the beginning of the year, 18
finalists were selected and included in a year-long
programme of business mentorship and support which included a business growth strategy designed
to suit their particular business, individualised
mentorship and of course grant funding to use to
develop their business over the course of the year.
Throughout the year, the candidates’ progress was
assessed by an independent panel of business
specialists and the top five were awarded grant
money, as well as an additional six-month support
programme to help them apply their prize money
for the effective further development of their
business.

Job creation is an important aspect of the SAB
Kickstart competition and, together, the 18 finalists
for 2015 created more than 100 full- and part-time
jobs throughout the year.

According to Octavius Phukubye, economic
development manager of SAB: “The key objective
of SAB KickStart and its model of business
development support is to ensure that the start-up
businesses thrive rather than merely survive. This
support creates an enabling environment in which
young entrepreneurs are able to assist others in
becoming economically active.

“Clement was an all-rounder whose progress as an entrepreneur
and that of his business impressed
the judging panel on every level. He is a true agripreneur
who has shown an incredible amount
of personal grit, a strong understanding of the
technical aspects of his business and his business is
set for positive future growth.”
Clement says that while the funding he received
through this competition was obviously a big help,
the mentorship in particular helped him shift his
focus in the business and make better decisions
about what to invest in.

Turning dreams to reality

When Clement started farming as a formal business
in 2012, he was a final-year agricultural science
student at the Tshwane University of Technology.
Today, he has a multi-aged broiler farm with
four houses on a rented smallholding in the
Onderstepoort area outside of Pretoria with a total
capacity of 6 000 chickens, of which he sells around
3 000 every month. The four houses currently in
use house 1 500 chickens per cycle, while a fifth
house with a capacity of 2 500 is almost ready for
placement. This expansion in capacity is aimed at
meeting the current demand for his chickens, which
is already more than he can currently supply.

Clement says he actually
leased his first plot of land
even before he finished
school. Here he planted
vegetables and later
added a chicken shelter.

“I was driven to start
farming for myself
because jobs are so
scarce in this country,” he
says. “I saw how everyone
around me was always on
the lookout for jobs and I
decided to follow another
route.”

He says he prefers poultry
farming to vegetables,
primarily because he saw
the opportunities in this
sector. “The fact that we
are importing chickens
tells me that there is a
high demand for poultry,”
he says. “This farm is my work and the way I earn my living.
That is why I am deeply connected with each
chicken. It pains me when one is sick or dies,” says
Clement.

Marcos Grassini of Alfa Chicks, where Clement
gets his day-old broiler chicks, remembers that
when he first met Clement, before he moved his
farming business to his current site, things did not
go as well as now. “When we first met this guy
didn’t seem to know what he was doing,” he says.

“However, what has always impressed me about
Clement is that he asks for advice all the time,
and then he listens carefully to what you say and
implements it into his business. Every time you
visit his farm, things look better than before – and
it shows in his results.”

This same desire for development spurs Clement to
enter the competitions for young entrepreneurs,
particularly those that include a mentorship
component in addition to prize money. This, he
says, is a good way to learn how to grow your
business and the money you win makes for good
expansion capital.

Clement’s clients include mainly resellers
(hawkers) for the live market, a few butcheries and
direct customers who collect live chickens from
the farm or prefer them slaughtered for a slightly
higher price. He describes his biggest challenge
as getting into the formal market, where one has
a set take-off agreement to rely on, as opposed
to the informal market where there is far more
uncertainty. One of the problems with this is that
the price per kilogramme offered by abattoirs is
below his cost of production, which makes this an
impractical off-take agreement to pursue.

He does not let this hold him back though,
working hard to strengthen his informal market
and offering incentives to his current customers to
formalise their business relationship with set offtake
agreements, for example through discount
pricing.

He is also keen on opening retail outlets for live
chickens in nearby areas, such as Soshanguve
and Hammanskraal, preferably in busy areas such
as near train stations, bus stops and taxi ranks.
However, he is very careful not to impose on
the retail markets of his existing clients, instead
looking at areas currently not covered by his
customers.

Bringing others into the fold

Those who work for him, say that he is more of a
leader than a boss. He treats his staff as though
they are working with him, rather than for him.
He consults his team members on every decision,
discussing the pros and cons in detail and then
takes their input into consideration when making
a decision. Both his employees and his family
describe him as hardworking and persistent.

Clement believes that anyone can start anything
that they believe in, but it is only dedication and
hard work that pay off. “Persistence and patience
lead to success,” he says.

He also believes that it is important to attract the
youth into farming and encourage them to create
employment for others. “They must not do it for
the sake of money, they must have passion and
work hard and the rest will follow,” he says.

This is one of the aspects that sets Clement
apart from other entrepreneurs and small-scale
poultry farmers: he views job creation as one
of the primary objectives of his business and is
already putting this into practice. For each of his
houses, Clement employs one full time worker
and an agricultural student completing his/her
practical component of training in agricultural
science. These students come from the University
of Pretoria, the Tshwane University of Technology
and Unisa, as per an arrangement that Clement set
up with these institutions.

He also goes to a lot of trouble to ensure that
the students not only learn through the day-today
work on the farm, but through many practical
workshops on all aspects of poultry production
arranged with and presented by his suppliers and
other people in the poultry sector willing to spend
a few hours on training from time to time.

Marcos Grassini of Alfa Chicks is one of these
suppliers who present regular training sessions at
Clement’s farm, because he believes that investing
in the success of your customers is the best way
of growing your business. “When Clement first
started buying day-old chicks from us, he took
fewer than 500 per cycle, which was around every
six weeks or so. Now he takes 1 500 chicks every
week and he is still expanding.

As for Clement: “I am living the dream, because
farming is the only thing I ever dreamt of doing in
life.”